


Ancient

by 1DE3shipper



Series: 100 Writing Prompts [75]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fear of Heights, Fluff, POV First Person, POV Liam, Tourism, xfactor-era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:57:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1590812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1DE3shipper/pseuds/1DE3shipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys climb to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral but Zayn's afraid of heights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ancient

**Author's Note:**

> this is sort of based on when I went to London over the summer and we climbed to the top...the view is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone visiting-unless you're afraid of heights, of course!

"This is so boring," Louis huffed as we climbed the stairs to the dome of the cathedral. None of us had grown up in London, obviously, so at this point we're still tourists. Our mission: climb to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. Our oldest member, however, seemed to have other ideas.

"Seriously, why are we even doing this?" he continued whining. "All we've done in London is look at a bunch of old buildings."

"It's all about the experience, Lou," Harry reminded him. "We're doing this just so we can say we've climbed to the top of St. Paul's."

"Yes, Louis," I glared at him. "Listen to the _youngest_ one. He's speaking sense." Louis flipped me off, much to the annoyance of the parents with children climbing behind us.

"Then let's hurry this up," Louis urged. "I'm hungry and if I'm hungry, Nialler's hungry so that's at least two of us."

Niall nodded in agreement. "Could do for some food." He shrugged when I shot him an irritated look.

"Fuck," I heard the whisper from behind me. I turned my head and Zayn had stopped momentarily, hand gripping to the railing as he stared downward, breathing heavily. 

"Alright there?" I asked him. "Hold up guys." The other three turned around too. Zayn looked up at me with tears forming in his eyes. 

"Fine. I'm fine," he gasped, taking one more step before stopping again. He didn't look fine to me. His breathing was heavy and he looked to be on the verge of tears. His hands were shaking and probably sweaty. I backtracked a few steps to stand close to him. 

"Zayn," I said slowly. "Are you alright?" 

This time he shook his head and gripped my forearm with the hand not holding onto the railing. "I'm...afraid of hights," he admitted. "I'm scared."

"Do you want to go back?" I offered.

"We can't, remember?" This was true.

"Would it help to hold my hand?"

"If...that's okay...yeah," he hesitantly grabbed hold of my hand and threaded our fingers together. As I predicted, his hands were sweaty and couldn't help but feel bad for him; he really did seem terrified.

"Alight back there?" Niall called down. I looked at Zayn who gave me a small smile before nodding to the others. 

"We're coming!" I responded. "We're almost there, Zayn," I said to him. "You can do this."

"I can do this," he repeated and we quickly made our way to where the others were waiting. 

The view from the top was breathtaking. We could see the whole of London and even Louis was getting excited with the sight.

"Want to have a look, Zayn?" I asked him. He was hanging back, keeping his body glued to the side of the building and as far from the edge as possible.

He shook his head quickly. "No no no. I'm fine... I...um...is it time to go down yet?" He stuttered anxiously. I took his hand again and led him to where the others were trying to see how many Starbucks they could find (because, really, what else do you do with the most incredible view in the country?).

"I'll hold on to you," I assured him. "Don't worry, nothing's gonna happen. I don't want you to miss this, though. The view's incredible." He shakily nodded and I put my arm around his waist. Zayn gripped the wall and slowly looked down. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and let out a jagged breath.

"So high," he whispered.

"I've got you," I reminded him. "Nothing's gonna happen."

"I know. Thanks Li." 

When he finally did open his eyes, a small smile did find its way onto his lips as he took in the view of the city beneath us.

"Wow," he whispered.

"Yeah. Wow," I agreed. He only looked for a minute before he took a step back and asked if we could go down now. I nodded, knowing that he had already taken about as much as he could. I was proud of him.

Niall and Louis decided to make it some sort of race to see who could run down the stairs the fastest so we didn't see much of them on the way down, but Harry hung behind with Zayn and I. 

"Were you scared, Zayn?" Harry asked. I had never actually told the boys what was wrong with Zayn, but I guessed they had sort of figured it out anyway.

Zayn nodded with a sheepish smile. "Don't like heights."

"You were really brave, though," I praised him. "You got all the way up there and you looked over the edge. That was incredible. I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks, Liam," Zayn blushed slightly under the praise. "I couldn't have done that without you."

"That's what I'm here for. We're almost down now."

"Don't want to let go of your hand yet," he grinned. "I like this."

I laughed. "Me too."

Louis and Niall were waiting for us at the bottom, already with the decision that we would go to Nando's immediately because looking at old buildings apparently makes them hungry. No argument was put up from the rest of us and we were on our way. The nearest Nando's (that we knew of) was a few blocks from the cathedral so we walked for about twenty minutes to find it.

Zayn held my hand the whole time.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think and check out my other one-shots! im continuing some of them so let me know which ones you like!


End file.
